Thankful...

It's always so good to spend some time with family during Thanksgiving. Or anytime for that matter. This Thanksgiving I had so many things to be thankful for!! I was especially proud of my little niece Milly who celebrated her very first Thanksgiving as well as being 6 months old & being able to taste the wonders of the feast. 

Gratitude is something that comes to all of us eventually, kids or no kids, as we face enough of life’s challenges and come to the realization that life can be really, really, really hard and unpleasant and downright awful sometimes. Believe me when I tell you that when you face enough shouts from angry customers or red marks from hard to please professors and disrespectful comments from disrespectful people who are supposed to know better, you learn really quickly how to be grateful for those who approach life and humanity in the way that God intended…with respect and courtesy and love.

Call it maturity, call it parenthood, call it the lessons learned from the logic of life, if you like; whatever it is that brought me to this point in my maturation, the fact for me is that I now know that being thankful is something that should come very, very easily.  But don’t people who have very good lives still have very bad things sometimes happen to them? And shouldn’t they have the right to complain from time to time? I mean, no matter how good life is, it is still life and life as we all know by now can be very, very, very hard…I think I said that once already.

What do we really know about being grateful? While we are still in an uproar over the airport security measures that promise to delay us (oh, my!) and possibly embarrass us (the horror!) children are dying daily of Cholera in Haiti, 1 million kids are sold into sex slavery every year, mothers in Africa are dying from a disease that is prevented by a 20 cent drug, and roughly 7,600 people worldwide were infected with HIV, mostly among those living in the world’s poorest, most destitute regions where hope is something they know nothing of…by our definition of the word anyway. Given that contrast of ideas, I would have to say that when it comes to being grateful, most Americans are clueless as to what that word really means. I count myself among the clueless, just so you know. I have been accused of being a bit high maintenance and my accusers are more often accurate than they are not. I work hard to gain the fruits of my labor, yes; but how would I react if I woke up to a world that was drastically different from the one I once knew? How would I respond to a bank account that was wiped out, a refrigerator that was empty, and a car that wouldn’t start? How would I respond to God if he had chosen me or my loved ones for the “challenge” of dealing with a fatal, incurable disease? Truthfully, I do not know. How would you respond to these things?

I think we should be thankful for all things, little and big, and be mindful of those things…every single day. Being thankful and unselfish is not merely reserved for the parents among us, though my experience tells me that there are but a very few blessed and fortunate souls who do not yet have children, but have somehow managed to learn the lessons of the grateful kind :)

All of this talk of America being so abundant is not to say that we do not have more than our fair share of struggles and heartaches right here on the home front. Lord knows millions of Americans live in brokenness and poverty and disease with little hope of change. But the opportunities that exist in this country vastly outweigh those available to the world’s poorest individuals.

The weather today was just perfect! I can't believe that being so late in November it's not cold at all! We headed out to the stores, but not at the wee hours of the morning. We went at like 10 am and I'm happy to report that the deals we were looking for we still found. We spent all day enjoying the beautiful weather and time together as a family.

I sincerely hope that you not only had a wonderful Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it) but that you enjoyed your precious time with your loved ones. Every person in our life is special in one way or another, and I feel that we need to let them know just how special they are because we never know when God will need them by his side.

I am looking forward to the remainder of the weekend with my family!